The Gift (Velvet Goldmine)
by bitexmarks
Summary: It's funny how beautiful people look when they walk back into your life." It was a relationship that no one could predict, a love brought on by the pain a common lover had bestowed upon them. One by one they pick the pieces up and find each other.


'Do you think this is wrong?' she asked as he moved to her and snaked his track-mark filled arms around her.

'Wretchedly.' His mouth found her neck placing soft, yet firm kisses upon her pale, velvety skin. If one were to see him, torn jeans, black leather boots, long, scraggly hair and blood-shot eyes one may think that his kisses would be fumbled, messy, but they were not. In all her years, there had been no other man that could kiss as perfectly as he could. Not even Brian.

'We shouldn't...should we?' Her voice was a mere whisper. She really did not want him to stop. Her heat was racing and all she saw before her was glitter and multitudes of shimmer.

She knew that she loved him. She loved this mess of a man so much she sometimes thought that she would burst. Oddly enough, he felt the same way.

You see, he never did say it. He would never utter those three words to her, but it didn't matter because she just knew.

It was the way he touched her, the way he said her name over the phone when he was missing her something fierce, it was the way he peeked out through a waterfall of dirty blond locks at her when she spoke to him, it was in every breath he took.

It had been nearly five years since they day she had split from her husband, it was almost three since the last time she had seen this longhaired beauty. Him in Berlin creating some masterpiece of an album that would try, desperately, to clean up his tarnished name, and she in London, trying to pick up the pieces of her broken life.

They found each other one New Year's Eve in Oslo; both were invited by Jack but neither of them knew that though, because, if they had, it would have been almost certain neither of them would have shown up.

Funny how things in life turn out. Funny how beautiful someone looks the moment they walk into the room and for the first time you really notice how they move, how they laugh, how they clink their champagne glass to yours and look into your eyes. Funny how you realize that in the eyes of someone you once thought that you loathed you could find love.

'We should, beloved. It is the thing to do.' She could feel his lips travelling up to find her earlobe, there he suckled and licked until she was melting from the inside out.

'Then...let us do it,' a whisper, almost inaudible escaped her lips. She turned her head and brought her lips to his. They kissed and it felt like Heaven had finally found them.

Around them, they were surrounded by holiday light. Christmas lights in an array of colour decorated the room; garlands of silver and gold were wrapped around a six-foot Christmas tree. Tiny, delicate glass baubles hung on its branches. Whenever the light would catch any of the ornaments, they exploded with light and shone like tiny suns. The streets below them were alive with cheer. How could one be melancholy on a night like tonight?

Gently she pulled away and took his hand. She walked to the window and opened it as he paused by the small oak coffee table and picked up a handful of papers and old photographs before following her.

'This...' he uttered as he looked into her eyes, 'is my gift to you.' His hands tore at the memories, fingers moved hastily over ever bit, and then in an instant of release he flung them out of the window.

The pieces fluttered down below like snow, immaculate and bright, stained only by fragments of Brian Slade's face and Brian Slade's words as the old pictures, newspaper clippings and letters fell to the ground.

'And this, my love...' she began as she placed her fingers over her ring finger and gently pulled the golden wedding band off, 'is my gift to you.' Like an angel taking its final flight, the gold ring fell to the city streets. With a clinking sound they could not hear, it sent them free.

He turned to her and smiled as he brushed a lock of hair out of her face. 'Merry Christmas,' he muttered.

'Merry Christmas,' she replied and kissed him.

They were now both free. Free to love each other. Free to start a new life, just her and him. There would be no more ghosts haunting them and that was the best gift they could have ever given each other.


End file.
